EPTHotel/Traveling
First Impressions
Attractions
Game Arrangement
Sound
Staff
Hotel/Traveling
The MLG site provided all the information you need to know about the closest hotels to the convention is and the deals that they offered. Pretty convenient for anyone trying to find a hotel to stay in. It is a bit costly for the average gamer, as most of us have do not have high paying jobs to pay $200+ a night. MLG struck deals at Mariott and Sheraton Hotel at around $125-135 a night, which isn't two bad when you start split the price in half for each person sleeping in that room. These rooms sell out fast, so one would have to plan almost 2 months ahead to going into the event. This is of course a nice problem to have, showing the popularity of MLG growing. I managed to bargain a club room at floor 16 for $135 at Sheraton. That is a $10 difference for exclusive access to the lounge for free breakfast/snacks, and a comfy place to stay for less than half the asking price. They only gave this to me since I booked only a few weeks in advance, and all the MLG dealt rooms were sold out.
If this cost is still too much for your friends and you, there are cheaper hotels/motels as you get further away from the convention centre. However there are disadvantages and advantages to each situation. There are also many other sources out there posted in the MLG forums for information on other places to stay or people wanting to split the cost of rooms(awesome community).Staying near the convention centre meant A VERY HIGH possibility of staying in the same hotel as one of the pros, which is a HUGE plus. I actually bumped into Bravo (Halo Pro), without knowing, until I saw him signing autographs as a booth. Also bumped into Teamliquid on their floor they were staying on. The benefit of having a cheaper hotel is traveling cost, and almost no chance of meeting pros. In other words, there is no benefit other than saving money. It defeats the purpose of going to MLG, in my opinion, which is for the experience of meeting pros, and watching them play.
After parties also took place in bars near the convention. A lot of the SC2 pros were in the Mariott hotel bar, so it was jam packed, and hard to get drinks in general. However, there are pros everywhere chilling all night. If you lived far away, you wouldn't be able to stay long, so living close by is another added benefit.
To the convention and back to the airport can be easily booked using the info on MLG's website, but there are also private executive limo services that will bargain you down to less than a taxi ride. Needless to say, easy, and very nice tourism staff at Raleigh.
Rating: 5/5
First Impressions
The amount of work MLG put was quite impressive. MLG ads were on the TV's in Raleigh's Airport as I got off the plane and tried to find my taxi. Very awesome to see the airport supporting MLG this way(allowing them to advertise). Raleigh is a VERY GREEN(lots of trees) city from what I saw from the plane down and taxi. Compared to Toronto, Raleigh is so clean and spaced out.
My impression of the convention centre from the outside was great, but entering the event was very lack luster. If you didn't actually go inside, you wouldn't have known you were entering an MLG. There was no actual signs leading to the convention centre to the public saying "MLG" or any big poster outside with pricing and such. There is no effort to get more interest from the public itself to see this unique event that so many of us enjoy. Seeing the size of the event was also not so impressive. The size of the place was half the size I thought it would be for the games. The other half is for sponsors and such, which I thought was a poor use of space. The waiting areas could have been using for sponsors, and extending to that would be the entrance. I understand however, if it is within the rules that only the bottom floor is used to host the convention, which would be unfortunate.
Rating: 2.5/5
Attractions
There was Calibur, Bic Flex, Dr. Pepper, Sony Ericsson, National Guard, Alienware, Stride Gum, Astro, and Playstation. I think I may be missing on or two, but it wasn't that bad of an assortment. Let's start out of the good. Dr. Pepper girls and Bic Flex girls. Gorgeous models hired in these booths to do work from getting people to enter the Bic Flex 4 tournament to handing out Dr. Pepper drinks. Very nice eye candy to take pictures with or talk to, but that's about it. It is nice the models were hired to our MLG event showing that there are jobs even for girls even though you have to be a model in this case. Too bad the majority of the guys going in this event were out of their league, including myself XD. There were also some beautiful MLG gold girls, but I never asked if they were models, however they didn't SEEM to understand the technical issues we were describing to them, when they approached us to ask for any improvements to their events. Gorgeous nonetheless. Good job MLG for that. That is another reason why I think the event should have been extended to the upper floors, so you can see these girls and guys, and see that the event isn't just PURE male dominance where females aren't welcome.
There are several little competitions like scavenger hunts, ring toss at Stride Gum, Mortal Kombat competition at the play Station booth. Stride gum and Dr. Pepper was distributed to the masses in large quantities. Alienware had their top of the line laptops/desktops available for the public to test out SC2 and League of Legends, with their awesome TactX mouse. Free stuff and contest from Calibur and National Guard and Sony Ericsson was advertising their new Xperia Play. Overall, there are attractions, but for the first day, this isn't enough for people spend 4 hrs from 1:00pm to 5:00pm when their first match starts. It needed a tad little more, or just start the actual games earlier. They had the AR drones for testing too, but I didn't bother, since it RC.
Rating: 3.5/5
Game Arrangement
SC2 Main stage, with Halo:Reach and COD on the sides. Not bad, but the demand of COD is so low, the chairs they needed would be only half what they had. SC2 needed at least double what they had, which is already double of the other two, while Halo needed a bit more for being on the sides. SC2 needed SEATS BADLY, where even on the final day, they didn't bother cleaning up the competing area for space for chairs, when they only needed 8 computer opposed to the 64~ computers they had there. There were people sitting in the aisles in the middle, the sides, and people even standing behind them after all the chairs were filled up of course. There were even times security came to get people to get out of the aisles, due to fire safety concerns. If they had more chairs, that wouldn't be a problem. SC2 definitely needed more seats, and I thought they would have learned from the last MLG they had.
A brief mention of League of Legends is in order where they had their little corner behind the COD crowd, with the 4 teams there. Only shown to the attendees 4-5 times, where it should have been showing every match possible. The few times they did show it on screen, there was more attendance for that than the COD finals.
MLG definitely needs to do better in their layout. Good effort but try again.
Rating: 2/5
Sound
Sound was actually surprisingly really good throughout the tournament. You could hear everything in your section perfectly clear even though the gaming venues were basically only 10-15m apart from one another. The sound was very centralized to the audience alone, where you just have your normal pop/rock/R&B/or whatever music on for the general public for the sponsor area. No qualms whatsoever about sound quality. However, I was not amazed whatsoever too. It would be awesome if they had blue tooth headsets that let you hear each of the streams going on for rent(deposit cost of equipment), and you can change streams from the touch of a button. That would impress me a lot if they did that at the start of the event where people were getting entry wrist bands.
Rating: 4/5
Staff
Some staff were nice, some were not. Outside food was not permitted inside the event, which is ridiculously stupid, because people snuck in food anyway. They had popcorn, hotdogs, burgers, and fries outside the entrance for people to buy. What's the point of popcorn if you can't watch and eat it at the same time? Those guards not letting people in because of that were just pricks or dumb, for not bending those rules. The only food inside was Dr.Pepper and gum. It was absolutely ridiculous. No idea why there would be garbage bins all over if food wasn't allowed inside. Regardless, there were some nice guards that let us in with food.
All the staff in the venue were nice and considerate. No doubt about it. However, they needed to hire someone to put the brackets displayed on the site on the main stage screen or the brackets computers in front of the competitor's area to let people know who is fighting who or who has been eliminated. As a person without any data outside of Canada, I was on roaming, and I didn't want to get charged to hell just to check the brackets (couldn't connect to wireless in convention centre). The people handling the main stage cameras on the audience did an amazing job though. They panned through signs, posters, and funny stuff on the audience when there was no ads or matches going on JP and an MLG staff came out throwing free T-shirts to the crowd while waiting for the next match too. Props to the MLG staff.
Rating: 4/5
Not bad, but could use improvements in many areas. However, MLG is worth at least going to once.
Final Score: 21/30 =7/10
Check out my experience in detail HERE
